


Sure (What You're Looking For)

by euhemeria



Series: And, In Sign of Ancient Love, Their Plighted Hands They Join [85]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Role Models, butchness, identity exploration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:42:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24784837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/euhemeria/pseuds/euhemeria
Summary: What Brigitte wants, she thinks, is to find a way to appreciate the masculine that is divorced from manhood.Or,Brigitte finds, in a butch role model, context for her own existence.
Series: And, In Sign of Ancient Love, Their Plighted Hands They Join [85]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/508281
Comments: 8
Kudos: 17





	Sure (What You're Looking For)

**Author's Note:**

> for meredith, who goes brigitte when we duo queue supp so i dont have to
> 
> just a heads up BEFORE anyone @s me. yes i use the word "dyke" in this (its a char calling herself that). do not @ me abt it bc IM A DYKE. like i specifically prefer the term

Confidence has always come easily to Brigitte. It was necessary, growing up as Torbjörn Lindholm’s daughter, that she be so, necessary that she know that no matter what others thought of her—thought of her father, his role in the creation of the Omnic Crisis, and later, after it fell from grace, his work in Overwatch—her identity was always her own to define. Defending her father, her family name, on the schoolyard taught her to be strong, and certain in herself, and her mother, walking through their neighborhood with her head held high, no matter the things that others said to them, taught her to care little for the opinions of strangers.

Always, Brigitte has been her own person. Even as she comes into adulthood, pursues a career similar to her father’s, works with her godfather, her father’s old coworker—those are her decisions she is making. She does not want to be her father, and she is not responsible for his mistakes, even if others believe her to be carrying on his legacy. Of this, she is certain. 

(This does not mean that she is not aware of her father’s legacy, does not mean she denies it. She knows well what her father did, the good and the bad, and she is careful to avoid repeating his mistakes. Beyond that, there is little more that she can do, other than to be better, and to try to help those still suffering from the lingering impact of the Omnic Crisis.)

Other people have a harder time, Brigitte knows, with finding their place in the world. Other people are less certain that what they are doing is right, are less certain of their own abilities, are less certain of their place in the world. Perhaps this is naïveté on Brigitte’s part, or the recklessness of youth, and perhaps she shall outgrow it, someday, but she doubts that will be the case. Certainty is just a part of her, as uncertainty is for others. 

None of this is to say that Brigitte thinks self-assuredness is an inherently good trait. It is helpful, when she trains, to not only believe but _know_ that she will do better next time, and in so thinking make it so. It is helpful, too, when she makes difficult decisions, like her decision to not shy away from her father’s legacy, unlike all of her siblings. Yet her certainty can, also, be a bad thing, because there are times when one _ought_ to, if not second guess oneself, at least give one’s decisions a second thought, times when one must face the fact that one is not always right, and even the things one believes, firmly, might not be true, or may be hurtful to others.

Brigitte is still learning to do that.

It is something Reinhardt cannot train her in—both because it is an innate quality and because Reinhardt himself has never learned to temper his confidence.

When she was younger, Brigitte loved that about him. Now that she is the one to patch up all his bumps and bruises, to repair his armor when he dents it yet again—now she wishes that he were just a bit more tempered. Unable to change Reinhardt’s temperament, she is at least attempting to adjust her own.

To admit that Reinhardt has faults is a difficult thing. As a child, Brigitte knew well her father’s faults, was told of them by complete strangers; to grow up as his child meant that she always, _always_ knew what it was he had done—and he admitted to them freely, admits them even now. Her father is not a perfect man, and that she has always known, always accepted, but Reinhardt…

Before Overwatch fell, Reinhardt was like something out of a fairy tale, a perfect, shining knight, and as an adult, Brigitte of course knows that to not be true, knows him to be every bit as human as her father, and herself, but it is still a difficult thing to realize that, much as she looked up to him, he has never been the man she thought he was.

(None of this is to say that Brigitte believes that Reinhardt is a bad person—for she does not—only that she believes he is a good person with a few tragic flaws. He may have embraced for himself the role of tragic hero, but her life she does not want to be a tragedy.)

In place of a father whom she could idolize, Brigitte had Reinhardt, and she has modeled herself after him in many ways, has literally made herself his squire, has seen his path as righteous and just. And it is good work he does, is good work she helps him do. There is much Brigitte could learn from him, but increasingly, she is aware of his faults, is aware of all the ways in which she has molded herself in his image—and sees those same faults in herself.

So, she is trying. She is learning to recognize her own faults, where they exist, and trying to address them.

But recognizing that unwavering self-confidence is not inherently good comes with a drawback—one must accept some self-doubt.

Her skills, Brigitte is sure of. Her role in Overwatch is not in question, and what she is doing with them now, in the Recall, it is a good thing. She knows, too, that she must not doubt that she is her own woman, exists apart from her father’s legacy. Of these facts, Brigitte is certain. 

What, then, is left to question?

Only this: the degree to which she has modelled herself after Reinhardt, after the person her father could have been, had he focused on protecting others with armor, and not with firepower. 

Her father and Reinhardt are good men, she does not doubt that. But she does not carry a gun, for she does not want to ever lose control of the damage her technology does, like her father has, and she teaches herself to doubt, because she does not want to charge into danger so recklessly as Reinhardt does.

(A moment to reconsider is not second guessing oneself, she will later realize, it is only allowing time for taking thorough inventory of one’s options.)

Her father and Reinhardt are good men, but she does not want to be either one of them, wants to be a person all her own, with different—and hopefully smaller—faults. 

But it is hard to imagine being like anyone else, anyone whose career did not end in disgrace, with Overwatch falling, because they have always been the only people to whom she looks for guidance.

And maybe—maybe that is a problem, in and of itself. Never did she look to her mother, who despite being a brilliant engineer in her own right, never became infamous in the way her father did. Never did she look to Angela, who wants like Reinhardt to protect others, albeit in a very different manner. Always, she turned to men.

In and of itself, that is not a bad thing, but Brigitte does wonder how that shaped her, without her realizing, what things about herself she has assumed to be intrinsic, only because theirs was the only perspective she considered things from.

What has she missed, by only prioritizing that viewpoint?

It is hard to say.

But, new to self-doubt, Brigitte suddenly finds herself filled with it. 

Has she not valued equally the work of women? 

She does not _think_ that to be the case, because she does look up to other women, it is just that the two people whose work was most inspiring to her were men.

But that could, in and of itself, be the result of internalized misogyny, of a systematic devaluation of the contributions of women in her life. If she had allowed herself to be, she might have been equally inspired by women.

 _Might_ have been.

Once that doubt worms its way into her mind, Brigitte cannot quite shake it. Increasingly, she notices all the little ways in which she has eschewed femininity. Never before has she considered that it might be a bad thing—sometimes, other people have told her as much, but she does not put much stock in their opinions—has only thought that it is something inherent to her being, that she does not like makeup, that she does not wear dresses, that she sprawls in her chair and laughs too loudly and would rather be thought of as rakish than beautiful.

But maybe, nothing about oneself is truly neutral. Maybe everything is learned, on some level or another, and the way in which she has chosen to live her life—though that choice may have been subconscious—is not above interrogating.

It is quite the conundrum, and quite the headache.

Questioning oneself, Brigitte quickly comes to realize, is thoroughly unpleasant. It is no wonder why Reinhardt does his best to avoid it, whenever possible. Once simple tasks are made far more difficult by self-reflection.

Difficulty is not, of course, a bad thing. Most things worth doing are not easy, this she has long since accepted.

She can, however, still wish that this, the business of introspection, were easier, came more naturally to her, yielded her more helpful answers. She does not, she thinks, dislike femininity, does not devalue it. In other women, in fact, she quite likes it—or, the look of it. Certainly, there are traits associated most often with the feminine that she greatly admires in others: nurturing, vulnerability, tenderness.

However, Brigitte does not want, herself, to nurture, would rather protect, and Brigitte does not like being vulnerable, much prefers being stalwart, brave. Tenderness—that she can accept, can like, can want for herself, in her own way.

Does that mean she favors traits that one typically associates with masculinity?

In herself, yes, she thinks that it is pointless to deny that she does. To take on the role of protector is something that she likes, and although she can look after others—does look after Reinhardt, bandages his wounds—she much prefers to ensure that he does not need her help by proactively beating over the head anyone who attempts to harm him. 

To be a protector, a knight, a _squire,_ those are things associated with masculinity, with maleness, all of them. There is no feminine form of squire, of knight at all. So that which she is and that which she aspires to be both exist outside of the realm of traditional womanhood, always have.

None of this is to say that Brigitte wants to be a man, for she does not. Brigitte is very happy to be a woman, always has been, although what being a woman is to her is, perhaps, not fitting with any ideal of womanhood she knows. 

(Briefly, when she was younger, she flirted with the idea that she might be non-binary. Eventually, she decided that it did not matter to her enough one way or the other, to be a woman or to be something else, for her to go through the trouble of identifying that way. Brigitte is not _not_ a woman, and that, she thinks, is close enough for her. Maybe later in life, she will reassess this, will decide that no, the distinction is meaningful enough for her to say that she is non-binary, but for now, that is not the case.)

What Brigitte wants, she thinks, is to find a way to appreciate the masculine that is divorced from manhood. Never will she be feminine, but she does not want for her only role models to be men, does not want to shape herself solely around the way they have behaved and acted.

What she needs, she knows, is guidance from a masculine woman. As much as she loves and respects both her father and Reinhardt, as important as their input is to her—this is something they cannot answer for her, is something they cannot know.

Fareeha knows, she is certain, where the line is between loving masculinity in herself and undervaluing femininity. After all, Fareeha, unlike herself, seems to have molded herself after another woman—after Ana—and although she tends to prefer the masculine, has not eschewed femininity entirely, just likes a different sort of it. And Fareeha is confident, too, if not recklessly so, seems to believe that the way she chooses to live her life, the way she chooses to present herself, the things in herself that she values, are worthy of pride.

And there is a notion—pride.

That Fareeha is a lesbian, Brigitte knows, and that she is butch, too—that would be obvious enough, even if she did not choose to self-describe that way—and so it occurs to Brigitte, then, that maybe she has been overlooking something very important in this whole self-inventory, something core to herself, her identity.

Already, Brigitte knows that she is gay—always says it that way, “I’m gay,” and not, “I’m a lesbian,” because it feels like it fits better, to be called gay, feels stronger. While she is thinking of butchness, however, what it means to be a butch lesbian, it occurs to Brigitte that she has never tried calling herself a _dyke._

So she does. It is a little silly, but she looks in the mirror, and she says it to herself, making eye contact all the while, “I’m a dyke,” says she, and that—that fits. It is not so soft as the word lesbian, not so gentle, but unlike the word gay, it is something that undoubtedly describes women like her, cannot be used for anyone else, is something separate from maleness of which she is proud.

Is it masculine? Perhaps not inherently, but it is, she thinks, the missing piece of the puzzle. As much as she looks up to Reinhardt, to her father, they are not the reason why she is the woman she is, are not the reason why she likes to dress masculinely, why she prefers being called rugged to pretty.

The way in which she has embraced masculinity is not a repudiation of the feminine, is not because she wants to be more like the men she looks up to, is not because she thinks being a woman is somehow less worthy of admiration, less important. To be as she is, a masculine woman, is instead an extension of her love _of_ women, just as it is for Fareeha. Already, she knew that she was butch, but when she considers her masculinity in the context of butchness—a context of women whose lives and relationships center other women—it is clear to her that no, to be butch is not to emulate men, even the men she looks up to, it is to create a space for masculinity without men, a kind of masculinity that exists wholly outside of the concept of maleness. Fareeha is masculine in a way that has never had anything to do with male role models, is focused not only on defending others, but on being strong enough to protect people, and to be vulnerable, both in turn.

(Most men’s masculinity, Brigitte has noticed, includes only the former. To be vulnerable, to many men, is to be seen as a weakness, and not the strength that it is.)

To be masculine as she is is not, in fact, imitation of manhood—because she would not say that Fareeha is imitating a man, not ever—it is an alternative to it. Masculinity can exist outside of men, outside of the ways that they are taught to think and feel, and masculinity can be hers, if she wants it to be.

She need not worry, then, that her self-expression has been unduly influenced by men, it being wholly separate from them, and can return, from worrying about her self-expression, to the question that brought her here in the first place: is she the person she is because her only role models—or, at least, most significant ones—have been men?

No, she decides. No, that cannot possibly be true. Even were that the case in the past, she has, now, a new role model, has Fareeha to look up to. It is not quite parity—two men and a woman—but now that Brigitte has realized that she can look to Fareeha for an example of what it might mean to be a masculine woman, what it might mean to be butch, she realizes, too, that she has been looking to butch women her entire life, without ever really knowing them, has seen them online and in the media and gravitated towards something in them, something innate to them that lives also in herself.

For now, then, she thinks that she can put this worry to the side. In other ways, she thinks, she can find more women to look to as an example, but she is not the woman she is solely because she idolized Reinhardt growing up, or because she chose to follow in her father’s footsteps. Never has she eschewed or devalued womanhood, only prioritized a different facet of it, and that can coexist with her wanting to become a knight, with her being a squire.

There is no feminine form of either of those words, is only the masculine, but Brigitte thinks that that is just fine by her. Masculinity does not preclude womanhood, after all.

Of that, she is certain.

And of this, too, she is certain: questioning has been helpful to her, here, uncertainty has, has helped her to understand and give voice to that which she already knew about herself. Uncomfortable as it was, introspection has been helpful to her, here, and likely will continue to be.

So Brigitte will not be Reinhardt, she will question herself, she will allow for doubt, insofar as it is productive, allows for her to make meaning of her life, but she can still admire his certainty, can recognize that in some ways, at some times, it can be useful. She will not doubt so much that she is paralyzed by it, will find a place between two extremes, sure of her abilities, but not reckless.

To do so will serve her well—of that, she is confident.

**Author's Note:**

> anyway. shout out to all my fellow dykes! and to be clear since brigitte uses the term for herself specifically bc she wants distance from femininity--i know thats not always the case. i myself am a very femme dyke
> 
> & to be clear brig existing on the boundary between womanhood and nonbinary existence is not intended in any way as a devaluation of nonbinary identity. its just that this fic was specifically abt butch womanhood, for a v specific butch friend of mine who falls squarely in the "im not NOT a woman" area of the gender spectrum
> 
> ANYWAY x2... hope u enjoyed. hope u all have good role models in ur lives who open u up to a full range and richness of identity that u never wouldve allowed urself otherwise


End file.
